Literary Journalism of the Conflict in Colombia: Olga Behar, El clan de los doce apóstoles and María T. Ronderos, Guerras recicladas

Abstract

The armed conflict in Colombia has generated a flow of journalistic and literary corpus that aimed to understand and reflect upon the violence that permeates the country. Telling the facts has become a duty, and analyzing them in the light of the truth, a responsibility. This essay analyzes two representative works of literary journalism that have had an impact on public opinion and, furthermore, have revealed important issues about recent national events: El clan de los doce apóstoles (The Twelve Apostles Club) by Olga Behar (Icono, 2011) and Guerras recicladas: una historia periodística del paramilitarismo en Colombia (Recycled Wars: A Journalistic History of Paramilitarism in Colombia) by María Teresa Ronderos (Aguilar, 2014). The objective is to explore the authors narrative techniques to create critical awareness about one movement that generated the major impact on Colombia’s armed conflict: the paramilitarism. I analyze the narrative techniques building upon the concepts studium and punctumproposed by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida, as discursive strategies for transmitting powerful messages about Colombian realities.

Keywords

• periodismo literario
• crónica literaria
• studium
• punctum
• paramilitarismo
• conflicto armado
• colombia